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Steve Davies made his ODI debut on Gandhi’s birthday in 2009. He batted in the middle order at 6, and even though he had an unremarkable start, he scored 5 off 4, and was dismissed by none other than Shane Watson, Man of the Match. It was close to a year later that Davies played his 2nd ODI against Pakistan, opened the batting, 87 off 67, Man of the Match. Followed that with quickies 26(21), 18 (18), 49 (61), 17(19) against Pak, all opening with Herr Strauss – partnerships of 78, 43, 35, 113, 31.

Next Davies played the first ODI against Australia, 42 (35), missed out on the next 5 games, joined Strauss for a duck a piece in the last game. So far in 8 ODIs, Davies averages 30.5, strike rate 105.62, keeps wickets, opens the batting and is gay.

For games 2-6, Prior opened and scored 0(3), 0(3), some consistency, 67(58), 14(15), 18(23) where England failed to defend 333, 5-1 down in the series, they dropped Prior and played Davies for the last match.

Prior has played 63 ODIs to Davies’ 8 – he averages 24.65 at a strike rate of 76, and has won 3 Man of the match awards so far.

In this world cup, neither Prior nor Davies is opening the batting, Davies can’t because he’s not in the squad. Prior didn’t bat against Holland, against India, he was gone with the wind, 4(8).

Give it time, you will have far more cricketing reasons to like Steve Davies. For now, how about going to his cricinfo page and pressing on the Like button. If he could, surely you can come out and do that much.

1 comment:

Can't help but feel bad for Davies. England's conveyor belt of keepers looks worse than ours did between 2000-04. I thought Kieswetter was supposed to be the better batsman-wk and James Foster the better wk.

Will his coming out have any say over selections? Will it go beyond performance based on opportunities? Will they be lenient perhaps, give it a little more thought than usual?